Car vandalism believed to be over parking spaces

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Boston police are investigating vandalism in five neighborhoods to cars they said were parked in spaces someone had shoveled out after last weekend’s snowstorm.

Between Monday and Wednesday, officers responded to at least seven reports of vandalism in Dorchester, Brighton, East Boston, Charlestown, and Roxbury, police said. Though the type of damage incurred in each incident differed, police said they were all related to shoveled-out parking spaces.

“We received several reports relative to motor vehicles being damaged,” said Officer James Kenneally, a Police Department spokesman. “There appears to be correlation between the ­vehicles being damaged and ­being parked in shoveled-out parking spots.”

On Tuesday morning, officers were called to Byron Street in East Boston, where a resident told officers he had found two of his tires slashed. The man told police that on Monday he had moved a chair from a snow-free parking space and parked his car in the spot.

On Brighton’s Litchfield Street Tuesday, a woman told police someone had slashed one of her tires overnight. Accord­ing to police, the woman had moved items intended to save the space prior to parking her car.

Also in Brighton Tuesday, a man reported that his car had been damaged overnight from what appeared to be “someone throwing a hard plastic sawhorse against it,” police said.

A Charlestown woman told officers Tuesday that one of her tires was flat and had a nail lodged in it, police said.

In Roxbury, the passenger side window of a car on Elm Hill Park was shattered overnight. Police said the car was partially blocking a neighbor’s cleared parking space.

In Dorchester on Wednesday, a man found the front tires of his car slashed after he parked it on Mayfield Street overnight, police said.

And in Brighton a woman who had parked her car overnight on Snow Street returned Wednesday morning to find two flat tires, according to ­police.

In Boston, residents with parking stickers are allowed to use space savers to reserve street parking spots they cleared of snow up to 48 hours after the city lifts the snow emergency. The snow emergency put in place for last weekend’s blizzard was lifted at 6 p.m. Tuesday. “We understand that people are frustrated out there, but somebody taking a parking spot doesn’t necessarily warrant an individual choosing to damage someone else’s property,” Kenneally said.